Defensive Computing bogs by Michael Horowitz
Not long ago my wife started to complain that her Android phone was showing the temperature in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit on the home screen. This was too minor a thing for me to focus on until something strange happened on my Windows computer - a Google search turned up results for the UK rather than US (where I live). After some digging, the full details of which are explained here, it turns…
The Wall Street Journal has been doing the public a favor, highlighting security flaws in the Apple eco-system. These are not software bugs, rather they are poor design choices by Apple. The biggest issue is that if a bad guy gets hold of an iPhone and knows the passcode to unlock it, the owner of the phone is totally screwed, despite assorted defenses. Apple made miserable hierarchy choices and…
The best VPN for left handed children with brown hair is ... Pretty much every day, someone publishes an article about the best VPN service for a certain purpose. By and large, these articles are useless.
My testing revealed that a bug first described by ProtonVPN in March 2020 for iOS v13 and v14, still exists in iOS version 15. VPNs on iOS leak. A lot.
While logging DNS requests, I found that Windows 10 spies on the use of System Settings in what seems like a fairly detailed manner. Also, I suggest some domains to block to prevent some Windows 10 spying.
I have moved the VPN topic at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com to its own web page. The page discusses: (1)Is the VPN working?, (2)Choosing a VPN - Features to look for and (3)Blocking Ads and Tracking while using a VPN.
The title says it all. The 64 bit version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC consumes 2 gigabytes of hard disk space on Windows 10. Ouch.
Show and Tell for sending a secure email message from ProtonMail to a recipient using normal (that is to secure insecure) email. Also, just how secure is this?
A firewall rule can help block ransomware, the story of how I protect the data on my NAS.
Wi-Fi security focuses on encrypting data while it travels over the air. WPA, WPA2, WPA3. But that is only half the story. Security is greatly improved when a Wi-Fi device is not visible to the other devices on the LAN. VPNs are concerned with the Internet, they do nothing with LAN side access, with one exception.
The ZocDoc website needs ads and trackers for it work. I learned this the hard way.
I found another iPad doing strange network things - trying to contact internal-use-only IP address using UDP and targeting high numbered ports. Why?
Search for router security information on Bing and the top result is a truly miserable article from Norton/Symantec. I critique it.
The Asus RT-AC1900P router offers either Beta software or older software with know security problems. You get to pick if you want firmware with either old bugs or new bugs.
My RouterSecurity.org website was banned by Bing back in 2018. Even if you don't care about routers, this is an interesting look into where search results come from.
The Lenovo Thinkpad C13 Yoga Chromebook Enterprise is the first Chromebook with the classic Thinkpad keyboard. I tried one for a while and these are my experiences. The keyboard is not nearly as nice as those on a Windows based Thinkpad laptop.
My experience setting up and configuring a Linksys EA8300 router.
Who needs GPS? Nearby Wi-Fi networks can provide a very accurate physical location.
Comparing and contrasting two Chromebooks: the Lenovo Flex 5 and the Google Pixelbook Go. This particular Flex 5 model sells for $410 and the Pixelbook Go model sells for $650.
Why a second router makes working from home more secure, what to look for in a second router and some configuration tips for the second router.
I went to the Apple store today and boy are my feet killing me.
The Spectrum Mobile app does not work, their website does not work, tech support is stumped. The problem? Tracking domains were being blocked.
The Android Intra app adds system-wide encrypted DNS. And, it can log DNS queries. The log turns up something interesting.
It is trying to make mysterious outbound connections to an IP address not on the Internet.
An interesting story of how a router was, inadvertently, blocking updates on Windows 10.
Microsoft makes miserable software. After fighting with the Default Apps feature of Windows 10, that is the only conclusion.
If your Wi-Fi feels slow, don't trust a single speed test. I got wildly different results from different tests.
American Express sent me an email message that really really looked it was a scam, like it was a phishing attempt. This blog goes into how I evaluated whether the email message was legitimate or not along with advice for your doing the same.
A boring title, but an important article. The data you submit on a secure HTTPS web page is NOT always secure. For decades the public has been told it is always secure, but this is a huge lie. Some web browsers warn about this, most do not.
A web page may appear to be a single thing, but under the covers it is composed of many individual components. The most obvious component is a picture but there are also scripts, iframes and more. For a web page to be considered secure by a web browser, all the components need to have been fetched using HTTPS. If something on the page was not securely fetched (that is, it was included via HTTP),…
Sure, you can hover a mouse over a link - just don't trust the results. They displayed destination of the link can be faked.
Suppose, for example, your router is currently running firmware version 1 and the vendor has released version 2. Crappy routers offer a choice, you can run either version 1 or 2. Not so with Peplink, my preferred router vendor. Peplink routers keep two installed copies of the firmware. You can have both version 1 and version 2 installed and switch between them just by rebooting. Apple Mac fans can…
Anyone concerned with being tracked on-line needs to be familiar with web browser fingerprinting. Without using cookies, fingerprinting can convert the web browser on a computer into a unique identifier by which your actions can be tracked. Browser fingerprinting is done by looking at many, seemingly trivial, aspects of a computer and web browser and combining all that information into a profile.…
How do you pick a VPN? Wrong every time. A joke? Yes and No. The vast majority of articles about VPNs use the wrong criteria to judge them. If they even make judgments at all, many are marketing disguised as reviews. I could go on about this, but this blog is just to make you aware of one criteria for judging a VPN company, one that no one discusses. This was brought to mind by a recent blog by…
Why an nmap probe shows that TCP port 53 is Open when it is really closed.
My router blocks attempts to communicate with a private IP addresses that leave the WAN port. Logically speaking, this should not happen. But, I see it all the time. Not sure why.
The upside of using a formula to generate passwords. Also, 14 reasons not to use password manager software.
One of the many ways I try to defend Windows 10 PCs from the spying Microsoft built into the OS, is with outbound firewall rules. By default, any program running on Windows 10 can make an outbound connection to any computer on the Internet. Despite this, Microsoft wants to insure that dozens of components of Windows 10 can always phone home, so it includes outbound firewall rules that grant these…
I have recently been looking at the Synology RT2600ac router. This is most powerful Synology router, their second generation product. In reading about the router, somewhere, someone mentioned that it creates hidden Wi-Fi networks, but I blew this off. Turns out to be true. To monitor the Wi-Fi network from outside the router, I used a free Windows program called WiFiInfoView from Nir Sofer. It…